Rapture Practice (20 page)

When I bend down to heft several two-liter bottles of Diet Coke onto the black conveyor belt, Mom snags my left hand and taps at the gold signet ring on my fourth finger.

“Remember, sweetheart,” she whispers, “it’s temptation to see it. It’s only sin if you keep looking. When you see a picture that doesn’t please the savior, you can always choose to look down at this ring instead.”

As Mom pays for the groceries, I spin my virginity ring around my finger with my thumb and study the cover of
Entertainment Weekly
. Yesterday, after ensemble practice, Bradley saw me tossing
The Scarlet Letter
into my backpack, and now he keeps telling me that the
A
on my ring stands for
adultery
.

“You should have Bradley come over for dinner,” Mom says as she takes the receipt from the clerk and puts her wallet back into her purse.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

I try to imagine Bradley sitting at our kitchen table holding hands and praying with everybody. It’s a terrifying thought. He’ll think it’s totally lame. Nobody will offer him a beer or a margarita, that’s for sure.

“What are you guys going to do tomorrow night?” Mom asks.

“I’m not sure,” I tell her, pulling my eyes from the magazines and pushing the cart toward the car. “Probably hang out at his place and work on our lines for the play some more.”

It’s another lie of the “not-the-whole-truth variety.” We’re going to watch a marathon of
90210
episodes Bradley
has recorded, and he’s invited a couple girls over. I feel guilty about lying to Mom, but if she knew what we had planned, she wouldn’t let me go.

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

I am standing in Bradley’s driveway, leaning against his car. Actually, I’m leaning against Ashley, the sophomore from geometry, who is leaning against Bradley’s car. The car is freshly waxed, making Ashley sort of slide around as I lean into her. Her lips are slick like the car, and I realize that her light pink lip gloss is probably all over my face.

“You’re such a good kisser,” she says softly.

“You are, too.” I whisper this into her ear, and feel her twist away from my breath involuntarily. She pulls me closer to her.

Note to self: Breath on the ear seems to have a generally positive effect.

“Mmmmm…” Ashley’s tongue is all the way in my mouth, and I kiss her back, strongly, almost forcefully. I’ve never French kissed anyone before. I feel relieved it’s finally happening. I know Mom and Dad would say what I’m doing is sin, but I try not to think about it. I’m already nervous about whether I’m doing this right or not. No need to bring my eternal soul into the mix.

Ashley slides her arms around my neck and lays her head back against the roof of the car. I know Bradley is inside with
Angela, and my mind wanders to what he’s doing with her on the couch in front of his parents’ giant big-screen television.

I imagine Bradley wrapping an arm around Angela’s low back and pulling her into him. I imagine what his face looks like while he kisses her. I imagine what his breath feels like as it breezes against her neck. I try to do exactly what I see him doing in my mind and, suddenly, I’m not nervous anymore. In fact, I am very
noticeably
not nervous. Ashley notices, too, and presses more closely against me.

“Hey, big guy.” She giggles. “You feel good.”

I don’t know what to say. My heart is racing, and my mind is barely keeping pace.

“There’s more to me than my lips, you know,” she says softly. She grabs my hand and slips it under her sweater and onto her stomach.

Her skin is soft and warm, and I can feel her body rise and fall with each breath. She slides her arms around my neck, then slowly weaves her legs with mine. I’ve never been pressed up against a girl this close before. I open my eyes and look down at her as our mouths melt into each other. She is lost in our kiss, holding on to me like I might float away.

All at once, it feels like I’ve lost my place. A knot of panic forms in my stomach, and rolls up my spine:
I’m not sure what to do next.

I clamp my eyes closed again and try to imagine what Bradley would do now. I picture his legs tangled up with Angela’s on the couch, his hand under her shirt, resting on
her stomach. I see him press into her gently, so I do that, too. Ashley moans softly.

So far, so good.

I pretend that I’m Bradley, and suddenly there is life in my hand. It’s not simply resting on Ashley’s stomach; it’s softly caressing the skin under her sweater. There’s a movie screen in my mind, and I can see Bradley calmly, surely, moving his hand up, up, up toward Angela’s chest. I do the same with Ashley, and as I do, my fingertips brush the cool satin of her bra.

Ashley pulls her lips from mine, and her head rolls back, her eyes closed, and I kiss her chin, then her neck, as I watch Bradley do the same in my head. Ashley arches her back as my hand slides over her bra and I gently caress her breast, and I hear a soft, low moan escape her lips.

Something about that sound is like a record scratch that cuts into the movie in my mind. I lose the picture of what Bradley would do next, like static blurring out the picture on an old TV set. All at once, I feel what is actually happening in the body beneath my brain. My face feels wet, almost sloppy, and my back is hot. My knees are weak, and I realize that my hand is touching Ashley’s right breast.

I feel us breathing together as her body rises to meet me, but it’s like someone has thrown a switch. Suddenly, my hand is frozen on the cup of her bra, just sitting there. Hanging out, like an accessory—a breast-ccesory:
Hey I’m Aaron’s hand, and I’m hanging out on your breast. We’ll see if he’s got any more
moves… Hmm. Nope. Nope he doesn’t. So… I guess I’ll just sit here for a second.

I realize that I am imagining my hand talking to me, and this feels ridiculous. I hear laughter, and to my horror, I realize it’s my own.

Ashley’s head pops up, “What? What’s wrong? Did I tickle you?”

“No! No… you’re… fine,” I say.
Quick. Think of something
. “I’m thinking this is not a very easy… position… for all of this. You can’t be comfortable pressed up against this car.”

“Oh!” Ashley starts laughing. “Yeah, totally,” she says, and giggles. She lays her head against my chest. “God, you feel so good. I could kiss you all night.”

“Well, if you stay leaned up against this car all night, you’re going to need a chiropractor,” I joke.

“Or a condom,” she whispers.

The words fall from her lips as if she’s said them a hundred times. She wraps both arms around my waist, then gently spins us so that my back is leaning against the car. She’s short enough that her head fits snugly beneath my chin.

A condom? Is Ashley saying that she wants to have sex with me?

None of the girls at Blue Ridge had ever hinted at having sex with me, but I didn’t really have a girlfriend at Blue Ridge. Erin from church decided she wanted to be “just friends” not long after the CD incident. Daphne was the girl I’d spent the most time with at school, but our relationship had never been romantic.

Of course, just because no one had ever made it clear
she wanted to have sex with me personally didn’t mean sex wasn’t happening at Blue Ridge. There were definitely rumors about people having sex—rumors that had been confirmed last spring when George and Ginny Karaft had come to the school for Spiritual Emphasis Week. We’d had chapel every day for a week, led by my dad’s friend George, a tall guy with a mustache from the seventies, and his wife, Ginny, a petite woman with a pointy nose and poodle-tight curls, who strummed an Autoharp as she sang scripture songs she’d written from Bible verses in Proverbs.

George and Ginny ran a camp for teenagers in Oregon during the summer. At the end of the week, there was a bonfire ceremony to induct campers into the “Council of the Rising Son”—“Son” referring to Jesus, the Son of God. During this ceremony, you could take a symbolic stick off the pile and throw it on the fire. The stick represented your life, being burned up in the service of Jesus. George and Ginny traveled the country as evangelists the rest of the year, challenging teenagers to “sell out to Jesus Christ.”

George’s energy was infectious, and on the last day of Spiritual Emphasis Week, he finished his message and then encouraged students to come and share what God had done in their lives that week.

“I know that we don’t have a bonfire here in the auditorium,” he said, “but we don’t need sticks and fire to talk about how the Lord Jesus has set your heart ablaze for him!”

A line formed at the side of the auditorium, and student after student got up and talked about what they had learned
that week. George had encouraged us not to hold anything back from the light of God’s love.

“What part of yourself have you been unwilling to give God?” he asked us. “Give it to him now, in the quietness of your heart, then stand up and be counted in front of your friends.”

Some students said that they had never really committed their lives to Jesus, and that they had prayed for salvation. A junior named Jimmy apologized for being disrespectful to our study hall supervisor in front of everyone, and promised to let the Lord control his heart and his actions in study hall from now on.

Then Marjorie Shackley stepped to the front of the line. Marjorie was gorgeous—one of the prettiest girls in the school. She had perfect auburn hair that blazed red in the sun when she ran track. She was petite and energetic, with a perfect figure and fiery blue eyes. When she reached the microphone, there were already tears running down her cheeks.

“I have to be honest,” she said, and sobbed. “I haven’t lived for Jesus.”

She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then leaned forward into the mic. “I lost my virginity,” she cried. “No! No, I didn’t
lose
it. I gave it away,” she said, choking. “I gave it away on the hood of a car.”

The silence that descended over us was complete. No one moved. No one breathed. Finally, Marjorie choked out a few more sentences asking for our forgiveness and God’s, then stumbled back to her seat.

I turned to Daphne and whispered, “Did that just happen?” She responded by digging her fingers into my leg and shaking her head in disbelief.

Making out with Ashley leaning up against this car makes me think of Marjorie Shackley and losing her virginity on the hood of another car. And my hand on Ashley’s breast, and thinking about what Bradley would do, and sex in general, and how
important
it all feels, suddenly seems
very
important. It feels like any decision at all could be fatal—like the next move I make could be my last.

I try to calm down.
Maybe it’s not that big of a deal.

If I’m really honest with myself, having sex with a girl has never seemed like a huge temptation. After all the sermons and instructions about how having premarital sex with a girl will ruin my testimony for Christ and my ability to have a healthy marriage, I’m sort of fine with not doing it. I understand that having sex as a teenager does come with more high-risk consequences than, say, listening to rock music or sneaking out to movies. Where sex is concerned, I’ve been told I should stay as far away from girls as possible. It’s all about saving, and waiting, and not putting yourself in a position where you can’t stop yourself.

“If you don’t want the truck to go over the cliff, you don’t park it right on the edge,” Dad likes to say. “You keep a healthy distance.” And Dad practices what he preaches. He has a window cut in the door of any new office he moves to at the Bible college. That way, if he’s alone in a meeting with a female student or professor, others can’t accuse him
of questionable behavior. They can see what’s going on for themselves, right through the door.

This was my first big make-out session, and while I was definitely turned on, making out with Ashley certainly didn’t feel like something I couldn’t control. I wonder if I’m doing it right. What I felt was exciting, sure, but it didn’t seem like an unstoppable lust worthy of putting windows in doors.

What does Bradley feel when he’s making out with Angela? Is it different?

Ashley shivers in my arms. The temperature is starting to drop, and the car feels cool against my back.

“C’mon. Let’s go kick those two jerks off the couch,” she says. “If we don’t get to make out, nobody does.”

I kiss the top of her head. Her hair smells clean and fruity, a scent I recognize, but can’t quite place until she pulls me past the half bath in the Westmans’ family room, and I realize we use the same conditioner.